If you want your fish to grow faster feed them more of a proven growth food and keep the water pristine. When I'm growing out discus I will feed 8 times a day with super beef heart flake, frozen black worms and NLS pellets. I also change the water everyday. The fish grow super fast this way but it can backfire on you if you don't keep up on the maintenance.
Fish not growing?
- Thread starter BellycrawlerJaws
- Start date
Hey, I've felt like this. I had my oscar 7 months ago and hes now doubled in size, but he stayed small for months, its only the past few months hes grown. All I can say if feed them more, I know everyone else has said it but thats the only thing you can do. Just try to vary the diet.
I'll feed more, my main food to clarify is NLS pellets, the tetra is exacty that, for the tetras. I just started feeding hikari bio gold to the Texas so maybe that will help.
RD, the discussion you linked us to here was very interesting, thank you. It would have been even more interesting if this discussion were about discus, or feeding exclusively beefheart. You are right that these fish don't eat beef in their natural habitat, however, they eat other fish because they need protein. Seeing as how these fish are not in their natural habitat while residing within our aquaria, is it really so bad to give them a different source of protein? I read the part in the other discussion about possbile health issues from feeding beefheart, and as I can see that may POSSIBLY be a risk, it's nothing that has ever, to my knowledge, been proven. I have used beefheart with all of my carniverous AND omnivorious fish and never experienced any problems at all. I have never used it as the only food they recieve, it has always been a suplement.
Pellets are an awesome food to use. And they are formulated to have all of the nutrients a fish needs, but a supplement never hurts. If this carpintis has stopped growing, and water is in good shape, there is something natural that is stopping it. Maybe the fish has just reached the maximum growth for that individual.
If the fish is going to grow more, RD is right that more food will help. But there is no concrete reason to rule out the supplementation of beefheart or any other fish food that is high in protein and other growth impacting nutrients.
I suggest you go back & re-read post #16 of that discussion, there was no mention of feeding beef heart exclusively, or to just discus. It was a general comment geared towards all species of fish, as was the quote I posted. If you want to argue the credentials of the scientist that I quoted that's something you'll have to take up with him.
If you are feeding NLS as the staple, there's really no need to add anything else to the mix. I would try upping the feed amount for a few months & see if that resolves the problem. If not, then you may have to consider some other factors. I've raised hundreds of cichlids on NLS over the past decade, and numerous species, with no supplements of any kind, and never had any issues with growth.
If you are feeding NLS as the staple, there's really no need to add anything else to the mix. I would try upping the feed amount for a few months & see if that resolves the problem. If not, then you may have to consider some other factors. I've raised hundreds of cichlids on NLS over the past decade, and numerous species, with no supplements of any kind, and never had any issues with growth.
Okay - upping how much I feed them daily, and making sure that the carpinte gets most of it. Using NLS and Hikari Bio Gold exclusively, with them getting a brine shrimp treat twice a month, and any earthworms I can find going in around once a week. (The texas gobbles them up)
Texas has had an overstuffed belly each day after feeding for the past few days, so hopefully within the next month I'll see some growth!
In the wild fish can go weeks without food. Ive caught about 100 fish that i have personally eaten in many many different spots and when i gutted them 90% of them had empty stomachs with like maybe a piece of bark or a piece of plant in them with an occasional tiny insect. Fish have a hard life and its very competitive so fish dont eat once a day in the wild, they eat less than that usually.
I didn't say they needed to eat everyday or that they needed to eat more then once a day to survive. The question was why are his fish are not growing. Providing more food daily will increase growth is what I was saying.
You said in the wild do you think fish eat once a day then followed it up with your statement about feeding them more therefore insinuating that he should feed his fish more because wild fish eat more, which is kind of irrelevant anyways since we're talking about aquariums.
